Boston "Tea Party"

In 1773, however, Britain furnished Adams and his allies with an
incendiary issue. The powerful East India Company, finding itself
in critical financial straits, appealed to the British
government, which granted it a monopoly on all tea exported to
the colonies. The government also permitted the East India
Company to supply retailers directly, bypassing colonial
wholesalers who had previously sold it. After 1770, such a
flourishing illegal trade existed that most of the tea consumed
in America was of foreign origin and imported, illegally, duty-
free. By selling its tea through its own agents at a price well
under the customary one, the East India Company made smuggling
unprofitable and threatened to eliminate the independent colonial
merchants at the same time. Aroused not only by the loss of the
tea trade but also by the monopolistic practice involved,
colonial traders joined the radicals agitating for independence.

In ports up and down the Atlantic coast, agents of the East India
Company were forced to resign, and new shipments of tea were
either returned to England or warehoused. In Boston, however, the
agents defied the colonists and, with the support of the royal
governor, made preparations to land incoming cargoes regardless
of opposition. On the night of December 16, 1773, a band of men
disguised as Mohawk Indians and led by Samuel Adams boarded three
British ships lying at anchor and dumped their tea cargo into
Boston harbor. They took this step because they feared that if
the tea were landed, colonists would actually comply with the tax
and purchase the tea. Adams and his band of radicals doubted
their countrymen's commitment to principle.

A crisis now confronted Britain. The East India Company had
carried out a parliamentary statute, and if the destruction of
the tea went unpunished, Parliament would admit to the world that
it had no control over the colonies. Official opinion in Britain
almost unanimously condemned the Boston Tea Party as an act of
vandalism and advocated legal measures to bring the insurgent
colonists into line.